hand, then your fingers. If you do it with tension it doesn’t work. If the hand is like a wet noodle, it moves so fast over the drum it sounds like a machine gun.” “With karate you develop your own center and your bal-
ance separate from your partner or your horse. Then you learn to move with and react to your partner and stay in balance. A good tai chi master can move a half of an inch and knock the opponent over, by moving from the core without tension or bracing in the body.” From these techniques come the mental fitness, focus and
confidence that translate into good riding. Matt waits for the training to take hold, rather than demanding that the training work. “Once you establish the bottom of the dressage training scale, the rest stack up. When the horse is strong enough that he can stay supple through basic movements, the roundness and throughness and engagement starts to be there. As you work with more engaging exercises and you start to put the
make it happen. A horse competing at the top level wants to do it. It’s amazing when the horse is giving you that confi- dence.” That confidence reveals itself differently in the two horses
he is competing this October arguably at the country’s most competitive and difficult event, Fair Hill International CCI 2* and 3*, Matt’s first at this level and a qualifier for the 2015 Pan American Games. By happenstance, Matt got the ride on the Holsteiner Hap-
penstance, a.k.a Hap. The eight-year-old gelding was bred by Wendy Webster of W2 Holsteiners in Penngrove, California, the town next to Petaluma, which is Matt’s hometown and now home to his training facility. One night, Matt walked into a local restaurant to pick up takeout and came upon Wendy and Hap’s owner, Mary McKee, discussing the need for a new rider for Hap. It was certainly a case of being at the right place at the right time. “It took a year before Hap trusted me enough to really ride
him. Dressage judge comments were always ‘conservative’ because he looks so quiet. But he’s so sensitive that if I put too much pressure on him, he would get very tense,” Matt recounts.
Hap (Hunter x S’Brina x Ramirado) excels at and enjoys galloping and jumping cross country, as demonstrated at Rebecca Farm, a challenging CCI2* that he won in July. “Out of the starting box he went into cruise control. He was a blast to ride,” Matt says. “You take the time to develop him and get him on your side, and then he will do whatever you want. He’s a sensitive professional-type horse, but that’s what gives him the competitive edge.” Matt’s other mount, Super Socks BCF, is another story.
Top left: Matt embraces martial arts and earned his black belt in 2000. Top right: Matt coaching from the sidelines. Above: A happy Matt and Super Socks BCF win the CIC3* this summer at Rebecca Farm.
jumps up, it’s just a matter of time. You’re not trying to make something happen. I’ve watched Volker and Sue Blinks ride. They never look like they are trying to do something. They are just doing it,” he explains. His philosophy applies to each phase of eventing. If you
only watched the cross country phase, you might characterize eventing as a sport for the aggressive. However, what makes Matt a contender are his focus and his understanding of part- nership. In martial arts, one strives to carry oneself with con- fidence without an ego, boldness without tension, direction without confrontation. Matt is calm, centered and grounded. His horses are secure with him, and seem to enjoy their work.
Eventing Takes Hold While he has gone as far as to say that he has come to love dressage, cross country jumping is why Matt is an event rider. “When I walk the course I might think, ‘why am I jumping a huge hedge with this huge ditch and drop on the landing when my heart is in my throat?’ Then when I’m on my horse galloping up to that jump, I have complete trust my horse’ll
28 November/December 2014
One of Matt’s coaches, Leslie Law, calls the horse “a good Irish bloke.” Matt literally passed him by in Ireland when he was horse shopping with his sponsors Bob and Valerie Fish and even- ters Derek and Bea DiGrazia at Fernhill Sport Horse Centre in Kilkenny, Ireland. “He was in the crossties, sort of asleep with his head down and his lip drooping. Unimpressive. I rode him and he was kind of stiff and grunting, like an 18-year-old, not an eight- year-old,” he remembers. Then Derek got on him. They kept putting the jumps up and he didn’t put a foot wrong. Matt recalls Derek comment- ing, ‘This is the kind of horse everyone should buy, but no one wants to because he doesn’t have the flash.’ And so the Fishes bought him. Surprisingly, Super Socks bucked Matt off on his first ride
at home. “This was when I started to like him,” Matt says. “I’ve grown up riding the difficult ones and enjoy the process. Partly because I’m quiet and pretty grounded, it’s easier for me to quiet a horse down than to ramp up a horse. With event horses, you have to be cognizant of where their minds are. So when he bucked me off, he intrigued me.” Work began with developing Super Socks’ balance and
topline. “We let him stay in a longer frame for a while and did basic suppling lateral work rather than engaging lateral
Brian Schott
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